Becoming an NHS Foundation Trust

last updated August 2014

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is working towards becoming an NHS Foundation Trust. Achieving this will give us valuable new freedoms which will help us to continually improve the quality of the services we provide locally for patients. It will give people in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and mid Wales more opportunity to get involved with the Trust and have more say in how local health services are provided and run.

We are delighted to already have over 9,000 public members, and we continue to invite anyone over 14 years old who lives within the local area to join us. To ensure a healthy and vibrant connection with our local communities, we'll be asking members to stand for election Public Governors.

Becoming an NHS Foundation Trust is not something that we are rushing into. This is because it must not distract us from our top priority, which is to maintain and improve the quality and safety of local hospital services through our founding principle of "Putting Patients First". Only excellent organisations go on to become NHS Foundation Trusts. We believe that if we we aspire to and maintain excellent standards within the resources available to us, then our aim to achieve NHS Foundation Trust status will naturally follow.

As part of our application, we will will detail our vision of future health care and plans to deliver our vision; fit to meet the changing needs of the local population we serve. Our plans will be assessed by Monitor, the independent regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts. In preparation for this assessment, we welcome your views on any issues that you feel we should take into account.

Let us know your views:

Before we submit our application for NHS Foundation Trust status we welcome your views on our Strategy (our plans and priorities) and our Governance (the way the organisation will be run). This forms our vision for the future

Our current strategic plan is based on the simple organising principle of Putting Patients First. This simple phrase makes us think about what really matters so that we can focus our time, our skills and our resources where it will make the best possible impact for our patients.

We welcome your ideas and suggestions for what should feature in our future plans. Please contact us with your views and comments.

How we are run: Our governance arrangements and constitution

Our draft constitutionsets out how the NHS Foundation Trust would be run. This includes a Council of Governors with a majority of public governors elected from the communities we service in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and mid Wales.

Your comments will help us to ensure that becoming an NHS Foundation Trust delivers real benefits in the quality of the services we provide for patients, and the working lives of staff.